USAA: Parent Search
A simplified way to verify parent-child relationships and obtain membership.
01: Overview
CONTEXT
USAA is well-known for offering financial services and insurance to members of the U.S. military and their families. To become a member, you need to meet certain requirements. But if children of service members want to join, their parent has to become a USAA member first.
PROBLEM
An alarming number, approximately 90%, of children attempting to join USAA face difficulties during the process and ultimately abandon it each year.
The primary reason is that providing a parent's USAA number is a prerequisite for membership. However, our prior research in other projects revealed that most children don't have this number readily available or know where to find it.
GOAL
Design an experience that presents alternate means of verifying military parent relationships, aiming to lessen or eliminate the need to request a parent's USAA number for verification purposes.
MY ROLE
As the lead designer, my primary responsibility was ideation and implementation.
This project was more of an inject/optimization initiative, and as such, the discovery phase was relatively light. We had already gained a solid understanding of the problem space through prior research.
BUSINESS GOALS
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Increase in the number of parents found in USAA's system
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Decrease in abandonment
02: Discover
The urgency and catalyst for this project were driven by the high dropout rate and low completion rate for children of service members during the membership sign-up process.
Based on prior user feedback in previous projects, we heard things like:
"My parent's USAA Number? Is that like their car insurance policy number? I wouldn't even know where to find that."
We felt confident we understood the problem well enough from a discovery perspective to move into defining the scope.
03: Define
Since a parent's USAA number is a prerequisite for a child to join, it follows that the parent must already be an existing member with USAA for their child to become a member.
This experience is designed specifically for children who answer "Yes" or "I don't know" to the question, "Has your parent signed up for USAA?"
If a user answers "No," they are redirected to an information screen informing them that their parent needs to join USAA before the child can proceed with the sign-up process.
SCOPE
We had some vendors already set up with USAA, but for this particular project, we needed a quick solution. Time constraints made it hard for us to dive deep into the technical integration part. We're planning to focus on that more for future improvements. But for now, our main goal was to create something simple and useful.
To make sure the data provided by users is accurate, we have to compare it with the data we already have about their parents. Until we can use external vendors to help with this, we have to be aware that our data might not always perfectly match external sources.
Even though the fact that there are adult children involved suggests that the parents might not be in the military anymore, there's still a chance that our data could have differences.
04: Design
IDEATION
During ideation, we explored various concepts that aimed to verify the child-parent relationship while adhering to business rules. Striking the right balance between user-provided information and preventing potential fraud was crucial.
TESTING
We decided to test two concepts:
Concept A | "Pick Two"
Hypotheses:
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Users prefer a single-page format to provide all the required information, as it streamlines the onboarding process and minimizes navigation steps.
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Users will find the inclusion of "recommended" tags beneficial, as it aids them in making informed decisions about the data they need to select.
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Among various interaction methods, a dropdown will be the preferred choice for users, as it offers a more effortless and straightforward interaction experience.
Concept B | "Like an I-9 Form"
Hypotheses:
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Users prefer to provide information in bite-sized portions rather than all at once, as it enhances the overall user experience during the onboarding process.
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The inclusion of data recommendations may not significantly benefit users, as they tend to select information they are already familiar with or consider relevant.
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Among the available interaction methods, using radios and checkboxes will offer a less effort-filled and more efficient user experience, allowing users to make selections with ease and clarity.
Test objectives:
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Assess users' willingness to enter information in pieces versus upfront.
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Determine the usefulness of "recommended" tags and how users interpret them.
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Understand users' preferences and decision-making process in selecting specific information.
Methodology:
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Unmoderated testing via UserZoom.
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Concept test with follow-up questions.
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Show both concepts and ask users to compare.
Prompt: "Imagine you're joining USAA and are eligible through a parent who has already signed up. Navigate through the screens as you think aloud."
FINDINGS
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Based on user feedback, concept B was preferred due to the ease of the checkbox interaction and the ability to see available options listed outright, as opposed to being hidden within a dropdown. The dropdown felt like a more effort-filled interaction.
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The green "Recommended" tag had minimal impact on users' decision-making when it came to providing information.
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Users expressed an appetite for consolidating questions into one panel to reduce the number of clicks.
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Most users would select a combination of phone, email, ZIP code, and date of birth (DOB).
RECOMMENDATIONS
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Remove the option for the USAA number.
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Remove the "Pick 1" section from concept B and include an option for "Last 4 SSN" with a second set of information options.
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Remove the "I don't have this information" option and instead add a subhead to the panel indicating that parent information is required to proceed.
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Utilize progressive display for a more streamlined experience.
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Incorporate checkboxes for a simpler interaction.
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Ask information within the same panel.
04: Deliver
FINAL DESIGN
Building upon our previous research and the latest insights from the concept test, we were certain about the design direction for our final solution.
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Two selected pieces of information
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CONCLUSION
With our lightweight experience change, we achieved remarkable results, increasing successful parent verifications from 6% to an impressive 21%.
FUTURE STATE
In the future, we plan to deliver an even more seamless verification experience by leveraging integration with 3rd party vendors. This enhancement will reduce the burden on users to manually provide information and further improve the overall process.